Seneca

The Seneca are a Native American tribe and one of the five original constituents of the Iroquois confederacy of upstate New York. They were the nation located farthest to the west within the Iroquois, and they became involved with fur trade during the colonial period. In 1609, the French allied with the Huron against the Iroquois, and the war raged until around 1650. In 1653, survivors of both the Huron and Erie were subjugated to the Seneca and relocated to the Seneca homeland, and the Seneca defeated the Susquehannock in 1675, further expanding their territory. After the Marquis de Denonville began a campaign against the Seneca in the late 1680s, the Seneca chose to ally with England against France. From the 1720s to 1750s, the Seneca assimilated the Munsee into their people, but they suffered from a dissolution of their traditional society, European encroachment, and outbreaks of disease. In 1760, during the French and Indian War, the Seneca helped the British with their capture of Fort Niagara from the French, and they had relative peace from 1760 to 1775. During the American Revolutionary War, the Seneca sided with the British against the colonists, and the Seneca lands were devastated by the colonists during the 1779 Sullivan Expedition. After the war's end, the Seneca ceded all their lands in New York to the United States, and they settled on reservations in western New York. Today, there are 8,000 Seneca, divided between the USA and Canada.